Stop the Heritage Drain
Against the black market of antiquity and the destruction of cultural heritage.
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Ancient egyptian mummy’s skull and dismembered hands to be returned to Egypt 90 years after being taken to the U.S.
The long-lost remains of an Egyptian mummy, stolen from a tomb and smuggled to the United States, is to be returned home after more than 90 years. The skull and two dismembered hands are to be returned to Egypt following an intervention by U.S. investigators, who prevented an American dealer from selling the contraband to a buyer in Manhattan. A spokesman for…
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Turkey seizes largest ever haul of ancient statues and coins
Turkish police said on Thursday they had rescued thousands of artefacts dating back to Anatolian, Greek and Egyptian civilizations in the largest operation to combat smuggling of ancient treasures in the country’s history. Among the items recovered were a golden queen’s crown with an inscription of the Hellenistic god, Helios, a bust dedicated to Alexander the Great’s conquest of India…
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Manhattan DA Returns 3 Ancient Sculptures To Lebanon
Three ancient sculptures are being returned to their rightful owners in Lebanon as the Manhattan district attorney forms a new antiquities trafficking unit. District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced Friday the repatriation of the treasures that were possessed by private collectors and are worth more than $5 million. “These are actual celebrated remnants of an entire civilization’s culture and history,”…
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Peru: Sweden returns 79 Paracas textiles
Peru’s Culture Ministry has received fifty sets comprising 79 pre-Inca Paracas culture textiles recently repatriated from Sweden, the institution reported. The finely-weaved pieces are part of the second shipping agreed upon by Peru and Sweden in 2014 for the recovery of textiles that entered Gothenburg back in 1935. The ceremony —which featured the symbolic return of five Paracas textiles dating…
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Hurghada airport officials foil attempt to smuggle 18th-century Coptic icon
Antiquities officials at Hurghada International Airport foiled an attempt on Monday to smuggle an antique Coptic icon out of Egypt. According to Naglaa El-Kobrosly, director of the Antiquities Units in Egyptian Airport, a passenger was attempting to smuggle the 18th century religious object to Germany.
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Artifact From Caligula’s Ship Found to Be a Coffee Table in New York Apartment
The Roman Emperor Caligula is renowned for his sadistic, debauched rule of ancient Rome that led to his assassination after just four years in power. Now Italian and American authorities are wondering how a piece of his decadent lifestyle — an elaborate inlaid marble mosaic from one of his ceremonial ships — wound up as a coffee table on Manhattan’s…
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No unauthorised Egyptian artefacts at Louvre Abu Dhabi: Cairo
The Egyptian cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center has denied media reports that Egyptian pharaonic antiquities have been sold or smuggled to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. In an official statement on Tuesday, the IDSC said that the antiquities ministry has said that Egypt has not sent any antiquities to make a debut at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, set to be…
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Greek MEP Links the Return of the Parthenon Marbles to Brexit Negotiations
“The Parthenon Marbles are considered as the greatest symbol of European culture. Therefore, reuniting the marbles would be both a sign of respect and civilised relationship between Great Britain and the EU, and much more than a legal necessity,” Stelios Kouloglou said. As a Member of the European Parliament and an investigative journalist Stelios Kouloglou has claimed the EU’s treaty…
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Egypt returns stolen currency artefacts to Iraq, China
Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities, Khaled El-Enany, handed over a collection of authentic coins, currencies, and bonds to Iraqi Ambassador Habib Mohamed Hadi Al-Sadr and to Chinese Ambassador Song Aiguo in a formal ceremony at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square on Sunday. The returned artefacts had been seized before they could be successfully smuggled out of the country. “The artefacts…
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Fossil footprints of early human ancestor stolen from archaeological site in Kasteli, Crete
Ten of some 40 footprints on the Kasteli site have been cut away and removed from the rock, where they were found by a Polish paleontologist in 2002. The theft was discovered by a member of the public that visited the site on Tuesday and alerted local police, and was later confirmed by the Natural History Museum of Crete. Police…
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